The United Kingdom is recording new daily cases of monkeypox, an official from the country’s Health Security Agency announced on Sunday, an issue the government says it takes “very seriously”.
“We’re seeing additional infections every day,” Susan Hopkins, the chief medical advisor for the Health Security Agency, told the BBC.
And Hopkins indicated that twenty injuries were recorded last week, and a new toll will be published on Monday, including “the numbers for the end of the week.”
And many European countries have recorded monkeypox infections, which may increase in number in Europe, according to a regional official at the World Health Organization on Friday.
Hopkins indicated that “the vast majority of injuries recorded so far in the United Kingdom, are recovering on their own.”
She added that monkeypox is “a new infectious disease that is spreading in our society”, with “infected people who have never had contact with anyone coming from West Africa”, where the disease was previously present.
She explained that the transmission of infection was recorded “mainly in individuals who identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual, or in men who have had sex with men,” noting that the transmission of infection can be explained by “the frequent close contact that they may practice,” according to what “France” quoted Press”.
She called for vigilance for the slightest symptom, adding that the risk to the population in general was “very low”.
Since there is no vaccine against monkeypox that does not require treatment, the smallpox vaccine can be given to protect contacts, according to Hopkins.
Education Minister Nadim al-Zahawi told the BBC that the government was taking the matter “extremely seriously” and that the UK had started buying doses of the smallpox vaccine.